Vienna Boys' Choir

There are a number of great musical groups that come to the Taiwan National Concert Hall to perform each year. I was hoping we could see Lang Lang in concert recently, but he is so popular, that tickets were sold out before we could even think of getting them. After going through the calendar schedule, I saw that the Vienna Boys' Choir was performing. I had heard of them (how many other choirs can you actually "name" besides them?) so I thought it would be great to check out. We ended up getting tickets and saw them perform this week.

This is a group that isn't 100 years old, isn't 200 years old, no...keep going...they have been around for over 500 years. Mozart used them in concerts and Schubert was actually a member of the Vienna Boys' Choir. It was quite amazing to realize that these boys range in age from 10 to 14 and can sing in any singing style you can imagine, and then some. In the concert they performed songs from: China, India, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Vienna and Africa. They also performed traditional classical as well as popular music: Schubert, Strauss Jr., Gershwin, music from the Broadway show "Hair" and even an amazing arrangement of Billy Joel's "The Longest Time."

It was an awesome concert and a lot of fun. From the kids running out clapping throughout the audience, to watching them sneeze and cough onstage trying not to laugh at it; it was great to see "traditional music" in an environment that was very relaxed, fun and honest. It showed that music really is the universal language, and that it should be enjoyed and not be taken too seriously.

As far as Chinese, my Power Point Presentation on my daily schedule went well and I got a 90% on my latest test. My Midterm in coming up on November 19th and that is 20% of my final grade so that's the next big thing coming up for me.

After not playing guitar for almost half a year, I started playing guitar again this week without any "real" pain, and that's the best news I had in a while. It's been 6 months since I first injured my tendon, and it is still not 100% healed...crazy! One common theme you can gather from this blog is GETTING OLD SUCKS!!!